


regina mills.

by mamaparrilla (burdenedwithgloriousmadness)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dark Emma, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Inner Dialogue, Soul-Searching, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 05:34:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4467287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burdenedwithgloriousmadness/pseuds/mamaparrilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a look inside regina's head following the s4 finale. rambling regina feels. some oq but that's not the focus; the focus is on regina and her own inner dialogue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	regina mills.

regina mills.

sometimes she regrets choosing that name, because it ties her to her mother. cora, the miller’s daughter, the betrayed, the betrayer, the manipulative heart-queen who made regina’s childhood a nightmare. all the same, being a mills is a focal point for regina. being a mills means not being the evil queen, means that even if there’s still a hole in her heart she has a chance of learning how to heal. mills is a fresh start, a second chance, a new day. besides, it’s henry’s name too, and so being a mills ties her to him — makes them a family. even emma will never have that with henry…

well. it doesn’t matter now, she supposes, because emma is the dark one and there’s no telling what will happen next. this puts regina in the novel position of being the hero. she knows the darkness, knows its pull, better than anyone in this godforsaken town. and emma only became the dark one in order to save regina from the same fate, so in a very real way she guesses it’s her duty. she doesn’t like being indebted to people. it’s too close to being dependent on people, and that’s just cora all over again. cora and rumplestiltskin and maybe even leopold, in a way. debts are chains and regina fought so long against chains, she won’t be going back now.

roots are different, though. love isn’t a chain, like she always thought. at least, not if it’s a good love. whatever love she had for cora, that was a chain. a cruel love, a twisted love, a love bound up in hate and suffering. her love for henry was (is) a lifeline, the only way out of her personal sea of darkness. her love for robin is an anchor, a way to remember herself, a rope woven of shared looks and strong-slipping fingers. robin is the only thing keeping her even moderately sane at this point. she has to be strong for henry of course, he’s already lost one mother to the darkness when the other just barely crawled out of it.

and on top of it, he’s the author apparently. sometimes regina looks at him and loses her tongue because he’s so grown up already, her little boy, and there’s so much that they missed (too many years of lost love, and a childhood that can never be regained). he’s so tall, but beyond that he’s so mature, he’s so wise beyond his youth and her pride overflows on occasion, tears building up in her eyes but for once they are happy tears. regina loves her son more than anything and she wishes she could tell him how much he means to her, but it’s not a thing you can easily put into words, and she’s no poet.

there are days when regina can’t live with herself. she looks at henry and thinks of his namesake, her father. how she ripped his heart out to enact the curse. or she notices people shy away when she passes and thinks she deserves it, because all the pain the evil queen caused is on her conscience now. she has nightmares of looking at her hands and finding them bathed in blood, or of looking in her mirror and seeing the evil queen staring back at her. those are the worst. the evil queen is a part of her, a buried part, but sometimes she comes out at night to torment regina with the memory of every sin she’s ever committed.

it’s robin who sits up with her on the long nights when her conscience won’t let her rest and all she can do is curl up in his arms and cry and drink cup after cup of the tea he brews her when she gets like this. so many times she finds herself shaking in robin’s embrace after a nightmare and his presence becomes a coping mechanism, a touchstone. he is always there and she doesn’t know what she’d do without him.

she can’t stop thinking about emma. this is her worst sin, even if it wasn’t intentional. emma sacrificed herself to the darkness and now the darkness is consuming her, destroying her savior’s heart in ways even regina can only guess at. emma, the hero, the golden girl, the good mother to their mutual son...letting herself become evil for regina’s sake.

there’s an irony to it, she supposes, though she’d appreciate it more if it wasn’t the most terrible thing her terribleness had ever done. who would’ve thought, three or four years ago, that it would come to this? that emma, good-girl emma, would surrender to the darkness so that bad-girl regina could retain her hard-won light? the plot twists are multifarious.

most of the time she doesn’t know where to put her feet. the world is too full of lies and confusion. she’s a rat in a maze, her poisonous life coursing through her veins. being a hero is harder than it looks. when the savior became the dark one, she figures, the mantle of savior had to be passed on, and now it’s on her shoulders, and it’s heavier than she expected.

and then of course she has to be a mother to poor roland, who has only a vague, childish sense of what’s going on and still doesn’t understand why he had a mama and then she was gone and then there was regina who was almost a mama but then his first mama came back and then she was gone again and now it’s regina again. he has nightmares too, and henry (being the perfect big brother) has taken on the responsibility of soothing the younger boy’s terrors while robin soothes regina’s. what a family they make.

zelena is an ongoing concern, of course. regina tries not to think about the fact that her wicked sister is bearing robin’s child, but sometimes the fact is inescapable.

shining eyes and glowing smiles are the zenith of her existence; loneliness and bad dreams are the nadir. the path she walks is shifting under her and her compass is damn near broken. she can’t see two steps in front of her and she can’t wipe the red off her fingerprints. high heels leave glaring footprints in the snow and she knows she can never go back, but she can’t be sure which way is forward. she can barely even remember her name sometimes.


End file.
